At Gurteen, in rough pasture north of the Glashagorour River in County Kerry, that convention is reversed. Here the axial stone is the largest in the entire circle, a fine regular slab with a deliberate internal bevel cut into its upper surface, a detail that speaks to considerable intention and care on the part of whoever raised it.

The circle itself measures 10.5 metres in diameter and comprises eleven stones, ranging from just under a metre to nearly three metres in length, with one now lying prostrate. At the north-east, two additional stones project outward from the circumference at right angles, forming a short entrance passage, a feature typical of the recumbent stone circle tradition found across Cork and Kerry. What sets Gurteen apart, beyond the unusual prominence of its axial stone, is what occupies the centre of the interior: a boulder-burial, a form of monument in which a large capstone is supported by smaller stones or placed directly over a burial deposit. Having a boulder-burial enclosed within the circle rather than positioned outside it gives the site a layered, purposeful quality. The wider landscape adds to this sense of accumulation. A burnt spread, likely the residue of prehistoric burning activity, lies around 130 metres to the north-north-west, and a cairn, a mounded stone structure associated with burial, sits approximately 350 metres to the west. A hillock to the south overlooks the entire arrangement.

Séan Ó Nualláin catalogued this circle in 1984 as part of his systematic survey of Cork and Kerry examples, and it is recorded as number 43 in that study. The site sits in working farmland, and the surrounding rough pasture gives it an unmanaged, uncontrived feel that many more-visited monuments have long since lost.